Blue Planet II reached over 37m people in the UK alone. Following the final episode, over 60% of people surveyed commented that they wanted to make changes to their life to reduce the impact on the ocean.

The response, said Attenborough, has left him “absolutely astonished.”

“We hoped that Blue Planet II would open people’s eyes to the damage that we are doing to our oceans and the creatures that live in them. I never imagined that there would be so many of you who would be inspired to want change.”

Each episode will follow an individual animal – lions, hunting dogs, chimpanzees, tigers and emperor penguins – at the most critical period in their lives as they navigate the world’s rapidly changing habitats.

This series will show for the first time what an animal must do to create and maintain a dynasty, and leave a legacy in nature.

Made by the team behind Blue Planet II, the most watched programme of 2017, the BBC aims to recapture its success with new ‘intimate animal dramas’.

As BBC Studios’ Natural History Unit turned 60 this autumn, 2017 was a particularly exciting and busy year. But I was nervous about whether Blue Planet II would equal the impact of Planet Earth II almost a year previously.

In November 2016, Planet Earth II attracted record TV audiences in the UK; the series went on to win RTS, Bafta and Emmy awards. That sequence of racer snakes hurling themselves at hatchling marine iguanas won a Bafta for TV’s most memorable moment.

The trailer, titled The Prequel, features David Attenborough's narration over spectacular scenes of the Earth's oceans and the underwater inhabitants.

The five minute clip teases what is in store for the long-awaited sequel to the 2001 nature series; from slow-motion shots of blue whales soaring out of the ocean, to a glimpse of a bale of turtles occupying an entire beach as they slowly make their way to the sea, to close-ups of the extraordinary creatures on the sea floor.

Well, you can, but you’re not going to get on television with that attitude. You’ve got to jump through lots of hoops to get there and it’s not just a case of how many countries you’ve been to. You don’t have to join the Army to get into TV, but I think it’s good to have some level of expertise or niche knowledge. Once you’re an expert in anything, in any industry, people will come to you. That’s where you want to be.

In a world first, museum-goers will get special hands-on access to rare objects, while a 3D hologram of Attenborough will offer his own insight on each specimen in a one-on-one interactive experience.

He will be transformed into a hologram and will guide participants to virtually hold and handle fossils, bringing the objects to life.

This virtual technology will allow people to hold up, peer inside, tilt and look more closely at the historic objects, which include fossils, bones and skulls from the museum’s world-famous collection.